pace car

[jigmoore]

I love the part where he says Miguel just thought the pace car should have been his free ticket to get back in the race again after being 30 seconds back.

No Ronnie...the riders expected to live by the rules and circumstances of racing, none of which should include official incompetence.  The rules and circumstances are why they continue to risk life and limb to stay out there, even after they crash hard.  They know things happen, LEGITIMATE things happen, when the rules are followed that can change the outcome.


Then the comment that there wasn't a spotter in the car today because "Just basically we were short on personnel."

Right.  It's really tough to find anyone who wants to ride around Daytona in a pace car in one of the biggest races of the year.  

That press conference is big on excuses.  I'd have respect for him if he acknowledged that they screwed up and couldn't identify the lead rider, and then screwed up again when he didn't wave the appropriate bikes past to get to the lead rider.  He was more interested in defending incompetence.  

Bostrums, Duhamel et al are right to be p1ssed.

i agree it was screwed up.  but it did make sense when barrick said that he didn't want to release nearly the entire pack to pass him....the intent of the pace car is to control the speed of the riders during an incident....but he should have waited 'til the incident cleared, then let the riders past, waited til they caught back up, then left the track.

he didn't belong in the pace car.  cracked me up with such a screw up, his response was 'well, i knew the procedures better than everyone, so it made sense for me to drive the pace car'.

uh-huh.

[weggie_man]

It's kind of hard to direct riders behind the pace car if you don't have a passenger to do it.........

They needed a dedicated crew for the pace car and they failed to provide that. The word about not having enough personnel is nonsense also. I've worked AMA at Daytona and there's always a ton of people around. But regardless, you don't take someone just standing around and toss them in the passenger seat to do race control on the track. You need a trained crew to do it!

It is the AMA's responsibility to provide that and they failed, period.